"Non-Germans" Under the Third Reich (131 page)

57.
Cf. K. Larenz, “Deutsche Rechtserneuerung und Rechtsphilosophie,”
³⁴
.

58.
Thierack,
DJ
(1942): 550.

59.
For a more detailed account, see W. Stuckart, “Zentralgewalt, Dezentralisation und Verwaltungseinheit,” in
Festgabe für H. Himmler
(1941), 1 ff.; Jarmer, “Die Einräumigkeit” (1940).

60.
“Führerprinzip als Rechtsprinzip,”
DR
(1934): 327.

61.
Cf. Hitler, in Picker,
Hitlers Tischgespräche
(1951), 251.

62.
Further details in von Stutterheim,
Die Reichskanzlei
(1940); Just, “65 Jahre Reichskanzlei” (1943).

63.
For more details, see Matzerath,
Nazionalsozialismus und kommunale Selbstverwaltung
(1970); for discussion of the Führer principle in local government, see Weidemann, “Gemeinde und Staat” (1936), 310 f., 318 f.

64.
In this sense, see BVerfGE 6, 133 (162).

65.
In the realm of justice, for example, there was the
Reichsjuristenführer
(chief lawyer of the Reich—Frank). In internal administration there was a
Reichssportsführer
(chief health officer) as well as a
Reichssportsführer
(chief sports officer) and a
Reichsarbeitsführer
(chief labor officer). (Cf. Reich Labor Service Law in the draft of September 9, 1939,
RGBl
. I 1947). In the realm of labor law, there was a
Betriebsführer
(works leader) in place of the industrialist.

66.
Cf. a letter from the minister of the Reich and chief of the Reich Chancellery to the Party Chancellery of May 6, 1941, and notes from the Reich Ministry of the Interior (no date, no author) in which the demise of the administration and the standing of civil servants are described in detail (BA R 43 II/425).

67.
According to Goebbels’s diaries of 1942–43 (
Tagebücher 1942–43
[1948]), 243, an entry dated March 2, 1943: following his appointment as Reich interior minister in 1943, Himmler tried (in vain) to scale down the “top-heavy bureaucracy” and to keep the apparatus flexible; see also the illuminating remarks made by Himmler (no date) in BA R 18/3523 and his ideas about the principle of rotation for
Landräte
, which he developed at a conference of Reichsleiter and Gauleiter in Posen (Pozna
). He proposed that
Landräte
should not work in the same place for longer than ten years to prevent sedentarism and “loss of drive.” In contrast, see letters from the head of the Party Chancellery to the Reich Ministry of the Interior, dated December 8, 1943, in which Martin Bormann expresses his opposition to this idea (BA R 18/3369), maintaining that a longer period of service has various advantages, including better contact with the population and supervision of the local authority. The principle of rotation was firmly rejected by the local government bureaucracy itself (a submission of the state secretary in the Reich Ministry of the Interior to the Reich Ministry of the Interior, dated February 19, 1944, ibid.); Himmler continued to insist on the ten-year period of service but promised flexibility in settling the question (Reich Ministry of the Interior to the head of the Party Chancellery, March 29, 1944, ibid.).

68.
An example from the area of administrative torts or offenses: breaches of discipline at the place of work could lead to fines imposed by the Labor Offices, criminal proceedings, or use of “state police powers” (“protective custody”); infringements of rationing regulations could, depending on the seriousness of the offense, lead to fines imposed by the Food Offices, criminal proceedings, penal orders, court sentences, or action by the Gestapo.

69.
Cf. BVerfGE 3, 58 ff.; 6, 133;
BGHZ
7, 76 ff. (94 ff.); Redeker, “Bewältigung der Vergangenheit als Aufgabe der Justiz” (1964); Welzel, “Gesetzmäßige Judentötungen?” (1964); Lewald, “Schlußbetrachtungen der Schriftleitung zu den Beamtenurteilen des BVerfG” (1954), 1274 ff.; Ridder, “Zur Verfassungsdoktrin des nationalsozialistischen Staates” (1969); Ramm, “Nationalsozialismus und Arbeitsrecht.”

70.
On the relationship between justice and the Führer principle, see Steinlechner, “Der Richter im Dritten Reich” (1974), 27 ff., 52 ff., with examples.

71.
According to Kordt,
Wahn und Wirklichkeit
(1947), 30, this assurance vis-à-vis the centrist politicians Dr. Kaas and Dr. Brüning was given verbally but never in writing.

72.
For an overview, see Wagner, “Die Umgestaltung der Gerichtsverfassung” (1968), 229 f.

73.
(Reich) Supreme Court of June 6, 1934, Supreme Court for Civil Cases, 144, 306 ff., 311: “Still valid is the principle guaranteeing general liability of the law—which is the leading principle of the Procedural Law for the Courts—that the judge is subordinate to the law. Similarly, sec. 336, Penal Code, is still valid, according to which the punishment for ‘bending’ (
Beugung
) the law is up to five years’ prison.”

74.
In this way the terms
Rechtsfindung
(interpreting the law) and
Rechtswahrung
(preserving the law), which often describe the work of a judge more accurately than the traditional terms, were usurped and brought into discredit by the National Socialists.

75.
Opening address by Minister of Justice Thierack to a conference of presiding judges of State Superior Court (OLG) and chief public prosecutors in the Reich Ministry of Justice on September 29, 1942 (BA R 22/4199; also in Weinkauff and Wagner,
Die deutsche Justiz
[1968], 153). Thierack continued: Judges ought to enjoy an elevated status, but must be led as well. The worthy, industrious judges with narrow horizons must be removed. The crisis between leadership and judiciary stems from the fact that the men at the top are “Old Campaigners” whose experience of the Weimar justice system has been negative. After the National Socialist reforms, the justice system will be transformed. For a fuller account of the control of the judiciary, see part 2, section 1; also, Steinlechner, “Der Richter im Dritten Reich,” 67 ff.

76.
“Guiding Principles” of the NSRB are in Frank, “Leitsätze des Reichsjuristenführers zur richterlichen Unabhängigkeit,” 176 f.; according to these (
Leitsätze
), the National Socialist weltanschauung was the basis for the interpretation of the law; laws from the period before 1933 were not applicable where this was in contradiction with the sound sentiment of the people (
Volksempfinden
).

77.
Schmitt, “Neue Leitsätze für die Rechtspraxis”:

(1) The independence of the judge is based on subjection to justice and the legal code of the state, whose justice it is the judge’s duty to dispense. Without this subjection to the law, judicial independence is arbitrary, politically arbitrary. (2) The decision as to whether a matter is unpolitical is itself always a political decision. (3) The so-called general clauses that are being implemented today in all areas of the judicial system do not affect the obligation of the judge. (4) For the application and handling of the general clauses by judges, lawyers, judicial administrators, or law teachers, the principles of National Socialism are the direct and exclusive authority. (5) The National Socialist state is a just state.

After 1945 Schmitt corrected his earlier statements; cf. his interrogation at the so-called Wilhelmstrasse trial in Nuremberg, in Kempner,
Das Dritte Reich im Kreuzverhör
(1969), 239 ff., 296 ff.

78.
R. Freisler,
DR
(1942): 145 ff., “As the supreme judicial authority, the Führer is also the highest-ranking German judge,
the
German judge as it were. A judiciary that fails to take account of this fundamental principle is unthinkable under National Socialist law” (149).

79.
Frank, “Leitsätze des Reichsjuristenführers zur richterlichen Unabhängigkeit,” 176 f.; Schmitt, “Neue Leitsätze für die Rechtspraxis”; C. Schmitt, “Zur Frage der Unabhängigkeit des Richters,”
DJ
(1935): 181; R. Freisler,
Etwas über Führertum in der Rechtspflege, Schriften der Akademie für Deutsches Recht
, reprint no. 1 (Berlin, 1935); R. Freisler, “Reich, Richter und Recht,”
DR
(1942): 145, 149.

80.
Cf. Supreme Court for Civil Cases, 152, 88; for more details, see Freisler, “Recht, Richter, Gesetz”; communication of Reich Ministry of Justice (Freisler) to Reich Ministry of the Interior on April 12, 1934 (BA R 43 II/424; also reproduced in Mommsen,
Beamtentum im Dritten Reich
[1966], 180 f., where the right of judicial review is vehemently rejected). In a similar sense also see Frank, “Leitsätze des Reichsjuristenführers zur richterlichen Unabhängigkeit,” 179 ff.; Huber, “Das richterliche Prüfungsrechts und seine künftige Gestaltung” (1940), 262; on formal retention of the judicial right of scrutiny except in the case of “political acts,” cf. Ipsen,
Das Problem der justizlosen Hoheitsakte
(1937); Scheuner, “Die nationale Revolution,” 166 ff., 344; Scheuner, “Die Gerichte und die Prüfung politische Staatshandlungen” (1936); Grundmann, “Die richterliche Nachprüfung von politischem Führungsakten” (1940); (Reich) Supreme Court,
DR
(1939): 1785; Nobe, “Das richterliche Prüfungsrecht und die Entwicklung der gesetzgebenden Gewalt im neuen Reich,”
AöR
, NF, 28 (1937): 194 f.

81.
Scheuner, “Die nationale Revolution,” 344.

82.
Scheuner, “Die Gerichte und die Prüfung politische Staatshandlungen”; Scheuner—after Smend (
Festgabe für Kahl
, 3:16 [1923])—refers to as “political” “any act that serves the preservation and governance of the state as a whole”; he proposes as a practical solution that the decision on whether or not an act is political be referred by legislation to a central authority (439 f.).

83.
According to sec. 7, par. 1, of the so-called Professional Civil Service Code of April 7, 1933 (
RGBI
. I 175), the supreme Reich or
Land
authority had the “final” decision, without recourse to the law, thereby excluding any judicial challenge to dismissal on political or racial grounds; cf. also Reich Supreme Court (RG) of May 6, 1936,
DJ
(1936): 1165.

84.
Sec. 7 of the Prussian Law on the Secret State Police of February 10, 1936 (
Preuß. Gesetzesammlung
21); for more details, see Frick, “Probleme des neuen Verwaltungsrechts” (1936); Frick, “Über grundsätzliche Verwaltungsaufgaben” (1939); Echterhölter,
Das öffentliche Recht im Nationalsozialismus
, 100 ff.; cf. also Higher Administrative Court (Prussian Administrative Supreme Court), Hamburg,
RVerwBl
. (1935): 1045; rights of recourse for wrongful imprisonment or persecution were also refused. On January 25, 1934, for example, the district court (LG) in Tübingen refused legal aid for an applicant who had demanded compensation rights because of wrongful imprisonment in a concentration camp. The court’s position was “that the judicial system could not adopt a different standpoint and disavow what the state has undertaken as a political act” (
JW
[1934]: 627). The Reich Supreme Court (RG) rejected the right to compensation from the state claimed by a lawyer who had been excluded from practicing his profession because of Communist activities; the grounds given were that formal legal procedures were inappropriate as a means of reviewing decisions of a political nature ([Reich] Supreme Court of May 6, 1936,
JW
[1936]: 2982).

85.
Frick, “Probleme des neuen Verwaltungsrechts,” 334: moreover, control by the administrative court should be dropped in cases where, although[!] the courts have jurisdiction, a judicial review would not be desirable “on grounds of state interest.”

86.
OVG (Prussian Administrative Supreme Court) law of October 25, 1934; OVGE (Decisions of the Prussian Administrative Supreme Court), 94, 134 ff., 138 f. (same decision in
RVerwBl
. [1935]: 458).

87.
In a decision of October 2, 1935, the court, invoking the principle of enumeration, declared Gestapo files beyond the reach of judicial review (nonjusticiable), since the Gestapo was a special police authority and no law had declared its files to be liable to judicial scrutiny (
RVerwBl
. [1935]: 577; for further details see OVG;
JW
[1935]: 2670; and OVGE, 97, 117 ff., 120).

88.
JW
(1936): 2189.

89.
PrGS 21.

90.
JW
(1939): 282.

91.
DVerw
(1936): 318;
RVerwBl
. (1936): 549.

92.
See introduction, III, 3, “The Principle of Racial Inequality (Special Law),” note 266.

93.
Cf. Ostler,
Die deutschen Rechtsanwälte
(1971), 280 f., 291.